It was getting late so they decided to leave the commercial district, they walked to the inn and Sebastian handed Aria the food they ordered before Lilia transported them back to the castle.
They appeared on the corridor that connected the different rooms and Aria curiously started looking at the decorations, although she has never been here, she recognized the symbol of the silver wolf… this was the castle of the Wolfstein family, she turned to see Aster with a confused expression.
Aster cleared his throat he forgot to tell her that they lived on the Wolfstein castle.
“Don’t worry although we live here, only us can enter this whole area… also we aren’t part of the Wolfstein family”.
Lilia smiled before interrupting them.
“Alice, Aria will be staying with you for some time, take her to your room so she can unpack her things, we will wait for you on the dining room”.
Alice wanted to complain but seeing the adamant expression on her mother’s face she could only nod and leave with Aria to settle help her settle down, Aster felt a bit guilty so he tried to convince Lilia to let them be on the same room.
“Mom… don’t you think it will be better to stay all together in the same room?”.
Lilia touched Aster’s in a playful way before answering.
“Nop, sir you will sleep only with mommy until you learn to never hide your “friends” anymore ♥”.
Aster sighed, “well at least I can enjoy being alone with mom, things will get interesting hehehe”, while Aster was thinking in all the things he will try with Lilia, on Alice’s room Aria was finishing unpacking her stuff when she asked Alice.
“So will Aster sleep with us like on Ghaleria or…?”.
Alice shook her head.
“Well normally we will probably all sleep together, but my mother is still angry because we didn’t tell her about you before so… she will be monopolizing him for some time, sigh this has happened before and it’s always hard for me to sleep without my beloved brother hugging me”.
Aria thought that Alice’s answer was weird but she also felt a bit in a loss, because the night she slept in the same bed with Aster she had the most pleasant rest of her life without needing to worry about anything, she also trusted that he will not do anything she doesn’t like so there was no reason to not keep doing it.
Alice saw Aria’s complex expression and she thought, “Well seems like I was wrong, if you are already making that kind of face just by not being able to share a bed with him… there is also no escape for you anymore hahaha”, they didn’t want to make Lilia wait too much so after finishing accommodating Aria’s stuff they went to the dining room.
Of course, Lilia sat next to Aster so they have to sit in front of them, Aria put on the dishes in the table and they started eating, Aster could feel the accusatory gazes of his sister and Aria but there was nothing he could do but try to convince his mother later, so instead he tried to change the subject.
“Mom, you will be supervising Aria while she refines the bone chilling lotus, right?”.
Lilia nodded, “yes darling, but there should not be any trouble in the process, I calculate that it will be done in two days at most”.
Once they finished eating, Aster went to the training room while Aria and Lilia used one of the empty rooms to start the refining process, he entered the room and took out one of the swords he bought earlier, it took him a couple of minutes to manifest the golden light from Hyperion but when he tried to induce it the sword turned into dust.
Aster was more or less expecting this kind of result so he didn’t feel disappointed, instead he tried a different approach, this time he took out an even smaller quantity of the element and just like when Lilia touched it before his intention wasn’t hostile so he was able to “attach it” to the sword.
“Now let’s see if it can hold on enough to make an attack” he though, he walked to an area where there were some mannequins made out of different materials, he decided to use a wooden one for the first try, not that it would matter since annihilation should erase any material with the correct amount of it.
After taking position at a distance of about five meters he dashed towards the dummy as he swung the sword while changing his intention from neutrality to offensive but before the sword made contact with the dummy it disappeared leaving only a small amount of dust which also dispersed a moment later which made him sigh.
“This… might take more time than I thought”.
Rya was seeing his tries from the mind space and she decided to not interfere, although she could help him, the capacity to adapt to a variety of situations was something she wanted Aster to develop since it could save his life in the future.
As the time passed Aster was in his 200th try which also failed midway, with the number of times he has tried he managed to slow down the destruction of the sword but it was not enough to connect the swing with the dummy, he could have gotten closer to it but then what would be the meaning of the training, your opponent won’t stay still waiting for you to attack.
He sat on the floor while sweat was dripping from his body, at some point he took out his upper clothes to improve his mobility, he started to feel a bit frustrated but Rya was amazed by his advance, annihilation was a quite volatile element so unlike other ones it required a lot of training to control it but he already made a “visible” progress even if it was a small one.
Aster took out a bottle of water from his spatial ring and drank it in one go, while he was resting, he saw Alice entering the training room but she ignored him and just focused on her own training, Aster found her angry attitude cute but he didn’t do anything he was still trying to figure out a way to use annihilation, after some time Alice started hitting a device that was similar to a sandbag to let out all her anger.
Alice was a body/energy cultivator so every time the sandbag received a hit, strong colliding sounds could be heard in the room, seeing that her brother wasn’t paying her attention Alice gritted her teeth and a thin layer of black flames covered her right hand, when she hit the sandbag this time there was an exploding sound which made Aster turn to see what was going on.
He saw Alice’s hand which had punched through the sandbag but his attention was drawn to the little black flames that were lit on the area where his sister hit, suddenly an idea hit him like a lightning out of the blue, he used the sword to make a little cut in his hand and dispersed some on his blood on the blade of the sword.
It took him some time to draw out more of the golden light because doing it required him to use his own spirit energy and after all those tries, he was almost out of it, once he saw the little golden light floating in front of him, he took a deep breath and attach it to the sword before rushing to the dummy, in his hurry he didn’t notice that the distance from his current position to the dummy was more than double the one he was using as the base of his training,
He felt the sword in his hands going through something but there was no resistance nor any sound, until he heard something falling to the ground and he saw the dummy cleanly divided in half, the part where the cut was started to crumble apart, it took him a moment to process what was happening but then he shouted.
“Hahaha, I freaking did it”, he saw the sword and although it looked a bit worn out it wasn’t destroyed like before, he unconsciously treated annihilation like something he shouldn’t touch nor approach with his own body when he used it for offensive.
But when he saw Alice using her attribute to enhance her fist, he decided to give it a go, of course he wasn’t stupid enough to try it first on his own body so instead he used something to replace him in this case blood to cover a part of the sword and then applied annihilation on it which worked perfectly.
In fact, now he realized he had covered more distance than what he pretended to, so this method worked even better than what he supposed it would, while Aster was celebrating his achievement, in the mind space Rya was in awe.
“What the hell was that, a body that is naturally compatible with annihilation!!! … sigh now I understand Lilia’s worries, thanks to the heavens he didn’t try it on himself first”.
Rya kept silent for a moment before she looked at the starry sky of the mind space, there was a serious expression on her face when she mumbled.
“A miracle, huh?”.
Her expression turned nostalgic for a moment while many memories flashed on her mind until she finally couldn’t help but laugh out loud.
“As expected from the man this empress has chosen as her first and only life partner ♥”.
Aster didn’t know it but the only weakness of annihilation was that no matter how much control one has over it, as long as the user focused on offense there was no way for it to difference between friend or foe as it is an element that goes against everything, although you could use a huge amount of spirit energy to somewhat defend against it for some seconds, let alone living beings, with the correct amount it will pierce through the space and reality itself.
But now for the first time since the beginning of the time, someone was able to “touch” annihilation in an offensive state without being reduced to nothingness!!!, without anyone noticing… the gears of destiny started to move.